The Biggest Open Kitchen Concept Mistakes — And Why You May Be About to Make One.

The open kitchen concept, where walls come down between kitchen and family room or sometimes between kitchen, dining and family areas, is as strong a design trend as ever. But if you’re planning this for your home, be forewarned that this change is not for the meek and timid. It’s also not for the non-professional.

Even if you love your taste, your style and are convinced that there is no interior designer out there who could offer you anything you don’t already know, consider hiring one anyway for this job. There are too many mistakes you can make. But rather than list them all—we thought we’d have some fun and find examples of “open concepts gone wrong.”

If you have any to share we’d love to have you post them with your comments!

Luxury Loft in Soho Takes Open to the Limit

Twistedsifter.com posted this image of an open concept “gone wrong” on their blog. Great idea—Sifter sifts through listings of luxury properties for sale in New York City to show some fascinating spaces.

This one, listed at the time at $6.95 Million USD, is an open-concept living space described as a 2,800 square foot “room” including kitchen, office, den, dining and living room all in one. Well, if you have a maid service that’s tidying up every day and no kids it might work. Oh wait, and no one watching the TV late at night or listening to loud music. And what if someone’s on the phone and someone else has homework to do….

I love this write-up on uglyhousephotos.com. The advice is that “if you’re a sloppy cook and splash grease all over your kitchen and don’t clean it, the easiest way to cover it up is to paint your cabinets to match.” I never would have thought of that! But if you do take their advice (and by the way we’re not recommending that you do) remember that unusual design in one room, in this case the cabinetry in the kitchen, may make it difficult to coordinate with the other rooms.

Image Courtesy of http://www.uglyhousephotos.com/

No More Fridge Magnets for Messages.

With an open concept kitchen you’ll be more aware of how neat your kitchen is—and if you like posting messages on the fridge for the kids or shopping lists on a chalkboard, remember that it might now make the whole kitchen living area look messy. Here’s one kitchen that seems to have solved the problem of fridge magnets—they make every cupboard a potential space for writing a message. Hmm…maybe this one shouldn’t go open concept.